


Emotional Commitment

by koalathebear



Category: Defiance (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 13:33:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koalathebear/pseuds/koalathebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nolan and Irisa have a sudden realisation that their relationship may not be quite as they had imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Emotional Commitment

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know! I am so bad with my wrong!ships. Justification/rationalisation for this wrong!ship is here. Set a little after [1.03: Devil in the Dark](http://koalathebear.livejournal.com/1427681.html) so there are some spoilers for that episode.

Irisa Nyira, known to some as Irisa Nolan, Deputy to the Lawkeeper sat in the Lawkeeper's office sharpening her knives in very deliberate and methodical silence, only the scrape of the already sharp blades against the stone creating any sound in the empty office. 

Lawkeeper Garret Clancy had had a shipping container placed on top of the building which he converted into an apartment – which was where Nolan and Irisa lived these days as well. It was Spartan living but far more comfortable than the two of them had enjoyed in the past. Their life prior to Defiance had been that of aimless vagabonds – soldiers of fortune. Sometimes they had been in the employ of Von Bach Industries, scavenging for Votan tech at other times they had simply been out foraging for themselves.

The Lawkeeper’s single jail cell, reserved for petty criminals and drunks was empty. There was little in the world more irritating than a chatty drunk or a criminal protesting his or her innocence to anyone who would care to listen.

Hardened criminals whose sentences were longer than a day or two were sent off to Camp Reverie, a work camp about a half-day’s journey into The Badlands east of town. Since Irisa had arrived in town, the jail cell had seen a regular traffic of petty offenders and irritating drunks. There had been a much smaller number of more serious offenders who had been sent to Camp Reverie – the young Irathient Rynn amongst them. 

Irisa's already crowded nightmares and visions were now haunted by images of Rynn – of the person she could have been had it not been for the intervention of Joshua Nolan. As clueless as the man could be, he had brought love and warmth into a world fractured by terror and fear. At that moment, the door of the office swung open loudly.

" _Eseneziri_!" Nolan greeted her lightly, holding out his arms as he walked into the room. He dumped a bag down onto a desk and locked his gun into the gun locker. He was unshaven, still wearing the clothes from yesterday and had a faintly crumpled look about him. He stared at the sullen Irathient who did not look up from her task.

"Charming – I don’t even warrant being acknowledged," he muttered, staring at her downcast head, the bright orange hair gleaming in the sunlight and her face turned away from his resolutely.

"What's the problem now?" he demanded. "Let me guess, Tommy didn't ask you to the school dance?"

He swore and leapt back as a knife went hurtling through the air past him, burying itself in the wall behind him.

"Jeez, Irisa – how many times have I told you not to throw knives at me?"

"I wasn't aiming at you," she said, staring down at the next knife in her hand. "If I was aiming at you, you'd be dead," she told him evenly.

"What has gotten into you today?" he demanded. "Your mood is fouler than usual."

Irisa tilted her head back and glared at him, her huge amber eyes blazing with hostility and irritation.

"Eseneziri means without weapons or concealed agenda … you had weapons."

"I know, I know!" he said holding up his hands and rolling his eyes. "I was kidding, ok? In any case, the weapons weren't going to be used on you. Unlike you, I don't tend to harm my loved ones."

"Shtako," Irisa muttered beneath her breath but loudly enough for Nolan to give her a very sharp look.

Nolan reached out, pulled the knife from the wall and then pulled up a chair in front of her. He handed her the knife. "I expect you to stop by the hardware store and buy some putty to fill in that hole in the wall," he told her.

She sniffed at him in disgust. "You smell like her," she said, her nose wrinkling and her eyes dark and disapproving.

Nolan sniffed at his clothes self-consciously. Kenya had asked him if he wanted a shower before leaving her room at the NeedWant but he had turned her down, wanting to get back to the Lawkeeper's office where he knew Irisa was waiting for him.

"Do you love her?" Irisa asked him abruptly.

Nolan stiffened. There was so much about the young Irathient that he still did not understand – would probably never understand. She had been by his side all these years, been his most loyal if not unquestioning supporter – saving his life on countless occasions in the Badlands - but she would always be alien and he human with an almost insurmountable vast divide between them.

"I don't love her," Nolan told her, honouring his promise to her that he would always be honest with her.

"Then why do you sleep with her?"

"I enjoy her company," he said honestly.

"Does she love you?"

"Unlikely – it's her job to sleep with men."

"So you waste our hard-earned money on sleeping with a whore?" Irisa asked him pointedly.

Nolan winced, rubbing his shadowed jaw ruefully. "Do you always have to be so blunt, Irisa?"

"I'm Irathient," she told him flatly. She fell silent for a moment and then stared at him. "There are women in Defiance who would sleep with you for free – why not engage with them?" she demanded. "The mayor would sleep with you," Irisa told him flatly. "She is always watching you – she finds you sexually attractive."

Nolan hesitated before answering and then shrugged. "To be honest, that's riskier for me. A non-business arrangement is more likely end up with the other party wanting a relationship, wanting love … commitment … I don't want emotional ties like that."

"And be a burden? Like me?" she demanded, her eyes narrowing sharply.

He winced. "No, not like you, Irisa – you're different."

"No kidding," she said sarcastically, pushing her knives to the side and staring at him challengingly. "So what is so different about me – or are you going to walk away from this emotional tie one day, too?" she demanded.

Nolan stared at her, his eyes dark and filled with an unreadable emotion. "No … I would never do that … could never do that – you know that."

He reached out and caught her hands in his, his thumbs moving gently, comfortingly over the scars that still remained at her wrists. These were scars that would disfigure her skin until she died but they were nothing compared to the psychological wounds that she still suffered. Only Nolan knew of the monsters that still haunted her nightmares and caused her to wake up screaming. Without being aware of what he was doing, he raised her wrists to his lips one by one and kissed them, his touch burning her flesh as much as they comforted.

"Why not?" she demanded challengingly, pushing him, wondering if she could make him say the words she had never heard him say to anyone, even her.

"Because you're a part of me – and you always will be," he said, holding her hand against his heart, letting her feel the strong, steady thud of his heartbeat against her palm.

"Sentimental human rhetoric," she said with disgust even as her eyes softened. "Is this is where you tell me you found me in a cabbage patch?"

He gave her a crooked smile, his hand reaching up to touch her cheek lightly. "Nah, nothing so boring for you Deputy Irisa Nyira. No cabbages left in Terraformed, earth … You? You fell from the sky like a piece of Arkbelt rain during Arkfall, almost knocking me out," he teased. 

"Not possible, that head of yours is made of solid rock," she retorted, a grin creeping across her face. "What's in the bag?" she demanded curiously, eying the paper bag that was on the desk.

He grinned back. "Stopped by the bakery on the way back here."

"Tea cake?" she demanded eagerly and Nolan's grin was ear to ear.

"Of course."

"I'll go upstairs and get some plates," she told him.

He rose with her but then became very still when she slid her arms around him, her young body soft and pliant against his and hugged him tightly. They had of course hugged many times in the past but something about this embrace made him feel a little off-balance and uncertain. His body tightened in a manner which unsettled him, responding to her as if she was a woman and not the feral child he had protected through the years.

"I'll say it since you can't, Nolan. I know you love me," she told him with uncharacteristic gentleness. Her mouth was soft and full of promise as she kissed him lingeringly. "Despite all that emotional human commitment shtako you're so scared of."

He watched as she ran lightly upstairs and his expression was troubled and very thoughtful as he watched her leave the room. He could still taste her lips, smell her scent even though she was no longer in the room. 

Through the years, he had been mocked and derided for keeping one of the 'enemy' by his side through the danger and uncertainty of life on this new Earth. He had been warned, more times than he could count that one could never trust an Irathient, that they were little better than wild animals - untrustworthy and traitorous. In a way it made a kind of twisted sense that the one Irathient he had decided to trust had stolen something precious from him that could never be returned to him.

**end**


End file.
